Web merchants sell items such as products, services, and data via the World Wide Web (“the Web”). Because most items sold by a web merchant result in a profit, measured by the amount by which the item's price exceeds its cost, web merchants have a strong incentive to increase the rate at which they sell items.
It is common for web merchants to design their web sites to include content that helps to draw interest to the web sites and to particular items in order to increase the number of customers that may buy these items. As one example of such content, some web merchants include item reviews on their web sites, which typically provide additional information about an item and, in the case of a positive review, an endorsement of the item. For example, some web merchants furnish book reviews on their web sites.
In some cases, web merchants pay professional reviewers to prepare item reviews. In these cases, the often-significant cost of procuring professional reviews can have a negative impact on the web merchant's profitability. Additionally, some readers of professional reviews may be distrustful of the evaluation of a professional reviewer.
In other cases, volunteers, such as customers, are solicited to prepare item reviews. While volunteer reviews can be procured much less expensively than professional reviews and may have more appeal to readers that prefer reviews from those they perceive to more substantially share their perspective, volunteer review programs often have significant disadvantages of their own.
For example, it can often be difficult to convince volunteers to prepare item reviews. Of those volunteer reviews that are prepared and submitted, a significant portion may be of little use to prospective purchasers for a variety of reasons: such reviews may be poorly written, fail to adequately support their conclusions, contain subject matter irrelevant to the item, engage in ad hominem attacks on the creator of the reviewed item, etc.
In view of the above-discussed disadvantages of conventional types of reviews, a more effective approach to obtaining useful item reviews from volunteers would have significant utility.